Archive for Hispanic fathers

The above article refers to a situation that will no doubt be a harbinger for future custody cases. Back in the 80’s we had a cartoonist, Gary Larson, who often used animals to point out the many foibles of American society. My all-time favorite showed two scientists, with their obligatory white smocks and clipboards, that were finishing a dolphin communication research project. Two dolphins were in a pool and one said to the other, “Como esta usted?” and the other one replied, “Estoy bien, gracias”

The two scientists both had looks of extreme frustration on their faces and one of them exclaimed, “Let’s call this off, we’re never going to understand this dolphin language!”

Last week I went to a couple of websites because I was curious about the nations with the highest and lowest percentages of bilingual speakers. It should surprise no one that the US was near the bottom of the list with only about 14%. It’s a global disgrace that foreign languages are almost never part of an American elementary school curriculum and that 14% figure is even more ludicrous when one considers that our nation is roughly 15% Hispanic and that the state in question, New Mexico, has perhaps the highest percentage of both Hispanics and bilingual speakers in the nation!

This title is the speakers riff on the organization that in 2015 became a media darling, Back Lives Matter. Despite the fact that proportionally far fewer black men have been killed by police now, as compared to 50 or 60 years ago, this group had been given almost blanket media coverage.

The speaker on this five minute tape, Larry Elder, is one of the most compelling commentators on race relations in America today (I’d love to hear a debate between him and Mr. Obama on the topic). He notes that in the “bad old days” (one could choose that same 1950-1965 era or even go back to the days of slavery), a black child was as much as ten times more likely to be born into an intact family than he/she would be today.

The New York Times chose to celebrate this year’s Fathers’ Day by pointing out that a foundation had recently come across a few letters that Barack Hussein Obama Sr. wrote to his son. The Times noted that so far the junior Mr. Obama has shown no interest in the letters. Unfortunately, this same lack of interest has been demonstrated by him in regard to how one of his main group of political contributors, the trial lawyers, prop up a family court system so prejudiced against fathers that most of them “abandon ship” early. This is one of the main factors leading to a 73% chance, in black families (and a 53% chance in Hispanic ones), that the dad won’t be around when the child is born, which in turn has lead to the 20 trillion dollars in “War on Poverty” spending since 1965.